User's Guide to the Nickel Direct Imaging Camera

Table of Contents

Detector Characteristics

CCD-2 (aka Dewar#2), is a thinned, Loral, 2048 x 2048 CCD, with 15-micron
pixels. Its 0.184 arcsec/pixel plate scale gives a field of view of about
6.3 x 6.3 arcminutes. CCD-2 is currently the only detector available for
direct imaging on the Nickel telescope. See
CCD-2 specifications for QE and other characteristics.

Readnoise and gain (measured on telescope by E.G. Dec 23, 2013)
for each binning and readout mode is listed below.

Binning

ReadoutSpeed

Gain(e-/DN)

Readnoise(e-)

Readout Time(m:ss)

Approx. Bias(DN)

x1

slow

1.8

8.9

1:16

1000

x1

fast

2.0

16.8

0:17

1000

x2

slow

1.8

10.7

0:21

1000

x2

fast

1.9

12.4

0:05

1000

x4

slow

1.9

13.3

0:06

1000

x4

fast

1.9

15.3

0:02

1000

The CCD full well depth is 118,000 e-. The chip is linear in response up to
60,000 DN in bin x2 fast mode (measured by E.G. April 2006). Other readout
modes may become non-linear at lower count levels, thus keeping peak levels
below 50K DN is recommended for all readout modes.

The CCD is read out using a single amplifier and the 32 column overscan region
occupies the far right (highest numbered) columns.